SimCity Cities of Tomorrow: Future Transformation

When you’re playing the SimCity Cities of Tomorrow expansion pack, it’s easy to see some of the incredible facelifts that many of our buildings have undergone. From the holographic signs, to the techie penthouse suites for our old-school brownstone buildings, these cosmetic features should tell you that the future is now. But how did we undertake the task of bringing an entire civilization out of the age of slow, “fiber optic” internet and into the new world of ControlNet, Omega, and shopping drones? Let me explain how to take your cities into the future.

Futurizing Your City

First off, you have complete control over how much of the future you bring into your city, and it’s represented by the new futurization data layer. A number of new buildings in the expansion have a futurization radius that will influence the buildings in its vicinity. Place one of these and you’ll notice the RCI buildings, cars, and even roads start to transform.

Perhaps the fastest way to transform your city is through the handful of new parks or the hydro pumping station. In addition to making your Sims happy, they’ll also bring some future into their lives. Each building type has a different radius of future influence. The MegaTowers also have a radius of influence that’s pretty large to start, and it will increase as your MegaTowers grow higher and higher, making it an easy way to futurize.

Once a zone is futurized, the RCI buildings that fill that section will appear different than before. They may look like older buildings, but with a handful of add-ons and sometimes over-the-top accessories. Cars of the future will also begin to spawn from the newly influenced buildings, and we’ve also added a significant amount of entirely new buildings for you to discover in SimCity Cities of Tomorrow. Oh, and let me tell you a secret: If you want to futurize your ENTIRE city instantly in Sandbox Mode, simply press “Alt + U.” My little secret to you!

Designing Tomorrow

Now that I’ve discussed how to futurize your city, let’s talk about our design influences. We’ve designed the architectural style to coexist with the preexisting structures from the core game, so the jump to the future will make sense visually. The general idea of our artistic aesthetic is to imply sharp, square, and angular edges for lower wealth and OmegaCo-related structures, while the elegance of the rich and educated Academy-related buildings tend to take a more modern, curved design.

Shiny buildings aren’t the only way to send your city into the future. Building gritty and grimy OmegaCo structures is also a great way to create a future-looking city. By building the OmegaCo factory, you can then add on modules that extend the reach of the futurization coverage. OmegaCo factories can also extend their reach by laying down extraction pod pipelines, but be sure to have your extraction division up and running at the OmegaCo HQ in order to make the most out of your handy pipe-laying abilities with the extraction pod modules.

Future Songs

One of the coolest moments I’ve experienced playing Cities of Tomorrow was when I noticed that as I built out my futuristic city, the regular background music started to blend with the new futuristic music. This, of course, is thanks to the new orchestral score from composer Chris Tilton. The blending of styles begins once you start placing future buildings. Definitely give it a listen.

That’s it! Hope you’re enjoying bringing your cities into the future. Feel free to experiment. Do you like to have a hybrid of both? Prefer all future? Let me know how you Mayor!

Comments

I like some of the buildings and how they futurize, although I wished that there was some more variety to go with... Maybe I want all of my wealth classes to have the boxy "used future" like that of Blade Runner or Judge Dredd, or perhaps I want the sleek and curvy buildings for all wealth classes for whenever I want to go all Star Trek or Starfox on a city... Of course, maybe some updates or packages can come along to give me those options?

Although I think my only current concern is the overall lack of futuristic parks... I NEED MOAR! After all, I want to have some areas that are just full of holographic signs!

Of course, I have to wonder about the mid-wealth sims; seems like they didn't go all into the future that much... Unless there's something I missed here...

Please, I can barely play simcity even with the graphics on all low, can someone help me? I should be able to play this game in decent graphics, after all Ive waited for this game for 7 months and this is what i receive

I was a very big simcity fan, played them all and bought them all even this one right when it came out, i spend around 85 euros to buy both the game and "european citys" and omg am i pissed, first the problems with the servers, then the fking bugs, but most of all the map sizes, dont get me started on that, even with the stupid "european citys" expantion wich costed me like 20 euros extra for only beeing able to play in a "european city" only after u build one of the fking land marks witch you can only do when u have a lot of simoleons and it only has mediom density buildings (what a waste of money that was) even with all that crap hapening i was willing to give it a chance but not if the fking map sizes keep being the way they are, it sucks to have such high expectations for a game and being let down so much, thats why i wont buy any more expantions nor any more simcity games and as a matter of fact nor will i buy any fking ea games in the future, i will be moving on to other developers like focus interactive with cities xl etc, cause there is no cure for this ea crap anymore.

Completely agreed. EA has all b*tt f*ck*d us. And I (as many of my friends) are NOT buying any more expension pack from EA or Maxis. Until they fix the game with bigger maps, less bugs etc we all know the f*cking deal.

It's a pretty good expansion pack, but definitely can be better. I like the normal Megatower design, it gives the feeling of that classic Blade Runner world when build with the right map. However, I believe one of the things which annoys a lot of players with CoT pack is that "No Work! Moving Out Soon!" issue. Sims just keep complaining even though there are thousands of available jobs in the city, although the problem will be self-solving after few months in-game time.

Other than that, in my opinion, since the Sim-world is now equipped with the technology and engineering skills to build Megatowers, it would be awesome, IF, we can have Mega-Factory too, like a Megatower-factory, but in a more challenging way such as the tower will produce massive pollution, high risk of fire or explosion hazard. City Specialization buildings in tower form will be great too, for example, those electronic factories.

Since there are actually nice maps for tourism-purpose build, like Tamarin Island, it would be great too if we could build some Beach & Golf Resorts, turning the island into a holiday paradise. A proper Tourism set should definitely be in the game instead of just Casinos.

I been thinking of a couple suggestions for future updates or expansions.

First of all just about the bigger maps, instead of making the maps bigger, why don't you just scale down everything (for example, everything could be four times smaller) but with that idea you would have to increase the zoom in scale.

2. Military, could be interesting to be able to defend yourself from disasters like zombie or robot attacks.
3. Adding in the choice of textures for buildings like police precincts or university (for example future or older looking buildings) and these could also influence thje look of RCI structures just like the futurisation stuff does.
3. Agriculture (only with the scale down thing)
4. Fix medium wealth, it king of never works, mostly in megatowers.
5. Under water tunnels!!
6. intersections for high density roads
7. Hotels for tourism!!! just like casinos but with no gambling halls! Cause not everybody wants a tourism AND casino city.
8. Special parks that adapt to the shoreline turning them into beaches.
9. Under ground metro!
10. Adding a tool letting us change the price of how much we sell our power or water, etc. and a certain cost when volunteering different vehicles between neighboring cities.
11. Try to add a couple more great works, pretty tired of the same old ones.¸
12. The price of global market products should change more frequently (every month or every year) depending on the rarity of the product in the region.
13. Seasons, depending on the regions and with these seasons add a municipal garage where we could have snow removal and stuff.
14. Fire trucks patrol around the city in real life so they should in the game.
15. Enhance the weather, when it rains it rains in front of our screen, lightning with sound effects and stuff.
16. Museums containing somewhat the same sort of game play as amusement parks.
17. Terraforming, but would be very expensive and long to do.
18. Higher density attracts more tourists.
19. There shouldn't be unemployed sims when there are jobs available, and there shouldn't be worker shortages when there are unemployed workers.
20. Add an olympics event to the pro stadium that only appears once a year and that lasts a month, including the extra of a university research project for a university sports center where the city team would train so when we host sports events our team would play against another regional or global team.

So I hope you guys actually read the whole thing and i hope it helps you for future updates or expansions!! :D

im having trouble with the maglev and sky hookups to towers..how do we get our maglev attached to our towers? how do we get a skyway between multiple towers? said we never had to touch the ground if we didn't want to.. but I cant get it working I made the terminals in my towers but nothing happens for me to connect them to anything or to other towers for a skyway..am I missing something?

I have 3 complaints: 1. My recycling trucks never came to my city I delivered them to AND IT MADE TRASH PROBLEMS! (that's because my city is near a mountain). 2. OMEGA.co factories can't have that much raw materials (MAKE FASTER DELIVERY TRUCKS/VR'S!!!) and 3. My controlnet workers and the controlnet can function properly, WHAT'S WRONG!? oh and maglev trains really exist.